"I like a good story, well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself." - Mark Twain

Saturday, April 29, 2017

Medical Gear Tip

Alone, AFAIK, among makers of tactical gear, Condor makes a spiffy pouch, above.For them, it's their MA-40 H2O pouch, intended for a water bottle.What it really is, is a great catch-all for a lot of things. The front pocket more than doubles the utility.With a liter bottle plus a survival kit in the pouch, it's a pretty good get home kit anywhere, anytime. Swap the survival kit for jerky and powerbars, and it's a 1/2-1 day ration carrier. It'll also hold a Katadyn Cadillac-level Pocket water filter, and you could put a lot of purification tabs in the accessory pouch. The uses are limited only by your imagination and experimentation, and the physics of what can be crammed into it.Today I want to pass along a great medical use, for those who can take advantage of it.As it happens, the main compartment is the perfect size to hold 500 or 1000ml bags of IV fluid. It protects them in transit, while making them easy to access quickly, and you can, as I have done, strap three to six on one or both sides of a range bag first aid kit, and have the means for fluid therapy/resuscitation for a number of casualties.What makes it even handier is that the side pouch will hold a full IV start kit, a full set of IV admin tubing, and an assortment of IV catheters, such that you could pack it all in a ziplok baggie, and in a pinch, pass out a fluid bag and start kit to multiple people simultaneously.They didn't build it for this, but for me, seeing it, the use is a no-brainer.If you can take advantage of it, you should.As always, remember, gear is only one step.It takes Gear + Training to equal Preparedness.

15 comments:

Good tip, will definitely pick up a few of these. However if you have time what would be very helpful is:

1: your recommendation on the best site to pickup iv kits & catheters. Just curious if you have a good source.And 2: a good site for the iv saline bags? Lact ringers appear not feasible due to prescrip regs, but even saline is difficult for reasons not clear to me other than the PTB don't want common folk to have them.

Almost everybody else imports their gear too.If I was doing HALO jumps at altitude, and Uncle was buying my kit, I'd let him buy me gold-plated Blackhawk and Tactical Tailor gear for 3-10x the price (which, in a just universe, would include a Playmate of the Month and sexual favors as part of the package). But the reality is it's all coming out of my after-tax income, no Playmates shipped, and there is such a thing as "good enough".

FWIW, I also humped Condor's gear (and VooDoo's) for about six years, 3-5 days a week, on the border in CA & AZ; the only problem I had in that time was a zipper on a med bag that was buggered from the get-go (I just replaced the bag), and an internal pocket fail on a ruck (with stupid heavy loads), which had no effect on doing its primary job. The rest is still serviceable after more time in the field than I did in a tour-plus in the Corps several presidents ago.

I beat hell out of it without a glitch.

Let's all try to remember that mil-spec is still a lowest-bidder game, and running a sewing machine isn't a uniquely American skillset. Other militaries field some serviceable gear too. While foreign zippers can be problematic, the beauty of MOLLE is that everything is threaded in so that even if the snaps fail, the pouch stays on.

And as I noted, Condor is the only maker I've found that makes that piece of kit.Anybody who doesn't need it is free to not buy it.

It's not like I'm getting anything for recommending it besides passing on info about the utility of the gear.

Looks comparable.As long as they're making stuff for serious use, rather than Airsoft, it should do fine as well.It also makes them about the nineteenth company to say "I am Spartacus", but if they can carve out a market in spite of that, more power to 'em.

No matter what you use to carry gear have a speedy stitcher,about 12 bucks on the big e,comes with heavy thread.I have zero tailor/stitching skills yet was out of it's box able to sew up me favorite tool belt/repair handles on gear bags and packs I use in the carpentry trade.I am a idiot,always over stuff/fill bigs beyond reasonable capacity though am getting better about it and have punished them badly,they now are all in good working shape.My stitching is not pretty but followed what a sail maker does using the speedy for small repairs/retros and thus the stitching tough and solid.I would say a must have tool for any one with gear bags/molles ect.,takes up little space and is now always when hiking in my hiking molle,a very well spent 12 bucks.

I get IV start/admin sets from shopmedvet, placed multiple orders with them and never a problem (or Rx required). Decent prices, and sometimes good sales on closeout items. Their IV fluids do require a Rx however.

Might try HealthPX.com for IV fluids without a Rx, that's where I got NS last and no complaints. Exp date 1 year out.

In most (nota bene not all, tetracycline antibiotics being one obvious example) cases, "expiration dates" on meds are a fiction for the convenience of manufacturers' sales figures, in return for supplying pharmaceuticals to the .Gov/DoD at cost.

No bonus points for figuring exactly what's inside a sterile sealed plastic IV bag of 0.9% saline 10 years after the "expiration" date.

Tetracycline antibiotics (as a class) don't turn toxic on expiration, or at least not with current formulations of the tablet/capsule form of the drugs. Tetracycline itself was tested in the Shelf Life Extension Project and found to still be usable up to 133 months following the expiration date. See"Stability Profiles of Drug Products Extended beyond Labeled Expiration Dates" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16721796 But don't spend $35 for the pdf report there though, you can read it for free via http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ (search under scientific articles).

I don't know how good their supplies are, but I just ordered some Israeli bandages through amazon and they were shipped directly from Israeli First Aid (israelifirstaid dot com). There is a LOT of stuff on their web site.

This looks like a great piece o gear,I'm gonna look right into it. Our Docs used to put sets into the open cover bag between that and the IV bad itself. Alternatively we got issued our IV sets using the ubiquitous Seal-A-Meal to package them.Bravo on the Speedy Sticher too; haven't used shoe-goo in forever but oughtta look at it again. Dunno as I'd consider Blackhawk "gold-plated" I used a bunch of their stuff early-on; went through several iterations of the early "three-day" packs and just got tired of all their BS.There is a company making good stuff in USA (though they have a line of stuff made overseas too and that's SOTech. Full Disclosure; I served briefly with Jim Cragg, the owner but haven't seen/spoken to the lad in about a decade. I don't get anything from him/them; I have bought several pieces of their gear in the intervening years and have been very happy with it. Their stuff is NOT inexpensive but it's proven to be really good.Great points on expiration dates and such; I'm fortunate in that my GP will write scrips when I need them. Boat Guy

My Blog List

About the Blog List

Not counting the news outlets or websites along the full range of accuracy and veracity, I follow 10 or so actual individuals' handwritten blogs. Looking them over, 8 of the 10 are current serving or former military and 4 of those 8 are some variation of high-speed low-drag elite forces ninjas. And 2 are cops.So in other words, the same folks I trusted in the military not to wet the bed, sh*t themselves, or otherwise run around like headless Nancys, are the same folks I trust on the interwebz, for demonstrating pretty much the same trustworthiness and circumspectly responsible behavior.Color me shocked.

Comments

Comments are appreciated. They require neither prior ID nor screening for content. Anonymous abusive or rude comments will be either mocked mercilessly, or simply deleted into the internet ether, solely at the blog owner's discretion. (That would be me.) If you somehow labor under the misapprehension that free speech applies everywhere, try this experiment: go to your next door neighbor's house, urinate and defecate on his living room floor, and call him a m*****f****** @$$hole, then see whether you receive an award from the ACLU, or an ambulance and police car, who stop momentarily to help collect your teeth. If you don't get this, you're too stupid to be on the Internet, let alone posting comments on my blog. Disagreement is one thing, even ignorance can be understandable, but rude @$$holery will not be tolerated here. I have neither the time nor inclination to imbue what a public K-12 failed to instill in those folks bereft of the ability to reason intelligently or behave like well-adapted human beings in polite society.That's why for you there's a Skid Row.